'Bored' teenagers gun down college ballplayer, Oklahoma cops say

Christopher Lane was shot and killed while out for a jog in Duncan, Okla., police said. His college baseball coach described Lane as "an extremely well-respected teammate."

By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News

A
college baseball player jogging on the streets of Oklahoma was shot to
death by three teenagers, one of whom told police they were "bored and
didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody," authorities
said.

The ballplayer, Christopher Lane, was visiting the town of
Duncan, where his girlfriend lives, the police chief told The Associated
Press. He passed a home where the teens were staying and was gunned
down at random, the chief said.

"They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: ‘There's our
target,'" the chief, Danny Ford, told the AP. "The boy who has talked to
us said, ‘We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided
to kill somebody.'"

Lane, 22, is from Australia but was in Oklahoma playing baseball. He
was a rising senior at East Central University in Ada, Okla., a catcher
who started 14 games and hit .250 for the Tigers this season, according
to the school's athletics website.

Ford told the AP that
prosecutors were expected to file first-degree murder charges Tuesday
against the three teens, aged 15, 16 and 17. They were to appear in
court, and it was not clear whether they would be charged as adults.

Witnesses told Australian television that Lane staggered and
collapsed on the road after he was shot in the back with a .22-caliber
revolver on Friday afternoon.

Lane's father, Peter, said that the killing was "heartless, and to try to understand it is a short way to insanity."

The girlfriend, Sarah Harper, on Monday visited the street where Lane was gunned down. A memorial with flowers had sprung up.

"I don't really care what happens to them," she said of the accused in an interview with 9 News of Australia. "I feel like if they don't get what they deserve now and in the present, they will eternally. They're just evil people."

Jennifer
Luna, who identified herself as the mother of one of the teens being
held in the killing, said her son should be punished if he was involved.

In
a tearful interview with reporters, she addressed the parents of the
dead ballplayer: "I wouldn't want to be in that position that they're in
right now. I'm always on my kids. I always tell them: If I lost y'all, I
wouldn't be able to live."

The autopsy on Lane was pending, the
AP reported. A call to the district attorney's office in Duncan from NBC
News on Tuesday was not answered.

The three teens are being held in individual cells at the Stephens County jail, Sheriff Wayne McKinney told NBC News.

He
said that there has been an escalation in major crimes committed by
people under 18 in recent years in Stephens County, a rural ranching and
farming community about an hour and a half outside Oklahoma City.

Also
in the jail are a teen accused of murdering his 16-year-old girlfriend
and a man just over 18 accused of killing a store attendant, he said.

"That
is alarming that we're seeing those type of crimes," he said in a
telephone interview. "I don't think it's unique. It's something we're
starting to see nationwide."